OMAN TRIP - DECEMBER 17, 2015 TO JANUARY 8, 2016

SULTANATE

OF

OMAN

سلطنة عمان

December 17, 2015 to January 8, 2016

Bob Francescone

OMAN-December 17-20, 2015

The chill wind slides down the mountain and slaps against the tent flaps, a breathy metronome measuring the night hours. We are camped on a rocky slope high in the mountains of Oman. Three days ago, we left the swirling, whirling insistent sensory color wheel of India. Oman's austere stripped landscape is shades of tan under a deep blue sky, balm to stretched and exhausted senses. We will spend almost 3 weeks here, almost all of it in the desert, camping under a growing and brilliant moon. Tonight, at only half full sail, the moon casts shadows. Inside our tent, Dennis and I are almost cozy.

First, a taste of the sophisticated life of this progressive, and wealthy country. After 45 years of the enlightened rule of the current revered Sultan, all 3.3 million Omani (and about the number on an average bus in India) have free education and health care. Poor people have free housing and utilities. English is widely spoken. Water is produced by desalination and is safe to drink everywhere in the country. Oman has no special food tradition. Its influenced by surrounding cultures, with flavorful input from India.  We have a meal Indian in inspiration, less heavily seasoned, and including delicious fillets of a sweet white fish. Date milkshakes are super sweet but, oh, so good.

The weather us perfection: high 70's, clear and cloudless skies.

As has been true everywhere we have traveled in the Moslem world, Omani are friendly, and comfortable hosts, who smile easily and welcome us. The men's floor length flowing robes are called 'dish-dash' and in them they are both 'dishy' and 'dashing', deeply browned handsome faces, easy smiles, and Moslem hospitality at the ready. We don't see many women.

We are ten: Dennis and me and our Austrian friends from the Chad trip, Helena and Fritz. Dieter/Jork, Sonya, Hedi, and Trudel are from various parts of Germany. Chris is our leader, organizer, driver and cook. Affable Nasser drives the other 4x4.  He and we are English speakers. German is the lingua franca of the trip with Kris providing translations when needed. Everyone speaks some English, Kris and Fritz very well, so we get by. From the Stone Age of my mind, I retrieve a surprising amount of passive Deutsch from my senior year foray into German 101 with Fraulein Thimig 53 years ago. I horen und verstehen much more than I dare sprechen. A few more belts of the Schnapps Fritz offers would probably help.

And, so we begin our trip with a visit to the pride of Oman. The magnificent Grand Mosque, in white marble and subtly decorated with the characteristic simple geometric designs, plants, and texts from the Quran is elegant contrast to the equally impressive, but oh so different, Indian eruptions of gods and goddesses.  Mosques are restful places. We move silently through a space that can contain 20,000---male---faithful.  In the great central prayer one of the world's largest chandeliers hangs almost fills one of the world’s biggest domes.

In the afternoon, we spend hours by a crystalline spring. I have a rather intimate encounter with a, VERY aggressive thorn bush. Well perforated, and virginities in many places permanently sacrificed, I am rescued and unpinned by two surpassingly handsome, mohaggonied, and muscled young Omani lifeguards with brilliant smiles as good as the sophisticated first aid kits, their English, and nursing skills. I am impressed. I think I see at least two women in our group looking carefully at that thorn bush and at the handsome nurses, measuring the odds of perforations and pleasure. Fantasies win. Our photos are terrible. The strong backlighting robs the mahogany of its gleam. Flash flattens sculpted lines. Memories will suffice.

Tonight, we have our first camp site in the dunes. We have arrived in the desert.

OMAN-December 21, 2015

The night is infinitely silent. It is our first night in the dunes and they welcome us with their gift of gold light and quiet. Dinner is around a campfire: fresh vegetables olive oiled and herbed perfectly, wrapped in foil and slowly baked next to another package of chicken. It is delicious anywhere, but set between the dunes and campfire taste buds blooming in the purity of the desert air and light our food is deeply satisfying....

Above us the half-moon sets. The Milky Way washes the sky in great waves of heavy cream, smudges of galaxies whirling in their billion-year dance.

Sleep is warm and deep in the silence, even the wind is subdued by the immensity of the sky and dunes.

I awake to morning light and our 6;30 Morgen Musik. Overnight moisture from the distant sea has met cool air from equally distant mountains leaving a lick of dew on the tents and nourishing ground hugging plants. Humidity is short lived morning gift in the desert but enough to grant life. It pales the deep blue sky briefly then evaporates as we drink our Nescafe, munch our cheese, and lip smack our Nutella.  By the time we set out for a walk through the dunes we are capped with the blue of heaven, gold at our feet.

Later today we'll swim in the sea.

Mid-morning, we spot three camels munching bushes with that half smile sideways grind that is so endearing. One permits us to scratch its scruffy neck, head held high and superciliously above our tentative ministrations, noblesse. oblige in full swing. All camels ---even the most feral looking--- are domesticated and tolerate people with sublime hauteur. We get the feeling ours is very lucky with its human underlings. It accepts us kindly. No spitting occurs.

The Gulf of Oman rolls ashore onto beach hundreds of miles long and scores of miles deep, thousands if you count the whole Sahara. We've picked camp on a sand dune high above the shore. It's a sandy slalom down to the water, a long slog back up but we do both willingly to claim our bit of paradise. Each of us is allocated a small tea pot of fresh water, a dozen cups, to wash the salt off. We pass on the swim. Three more days of camping means 3 more days before we hit running water again...and three days of ocean salt itching.

OMAN-December 22, 2015

The rumble mumble of the surf pulls us from sleep into the pale grey of early dawn. Our tent is high on a dune, desert on one side steep slope then the swirl of waters with wondrous names: Gulf of Oman/ Arabian Sea/Indian Ocean on the other. Through the open tent flaps dawn seeps in with a whisper breeze. This is heaven.

Kris whips up sunrise omelets, golden as the sun, flecked with the red of peppers from last night's salad. A fox visited our camp during the nights, paw footprints partnering our toed stamps in the sand. We have been here, too

the desert sits immense, waiting for our senses to make sense of the immensity...all sky and dunes, canvas waiting for our senses. India fills the world with senses, crowding and layering one upon the other. India pours in. The desert sits waiting for our senses to seep out. Each renews us. The desert after India soothes senses, stimulated almost to abuse. Perhaps India after the desert certainly would challenge rested senses.

And, they ask us why we travel!

By late afternoon we have stood high on a bluff counting the shades of the sea from deepest lapis lazuli to sexy ultramarine to ...nameless sapphires.

Later we camp on another rock-bound beach, ancient lava flows frozen sunwards, high stratigraphic cliffs to the north, records of ancient beaches and sandstorms. 

I swim in 3 seas at the same time: Gulf of Oman, Arabian Sea, Indian Ocean. My headscarf doubles as sarong cum swim suit, fringe floating like dozens of red lures. The tiny local fish desist. Nasser scores some octopus and fresh fish from some women on the beach. An Omani family of 3 tiny deeply brown boys (5,4,3?) pregnant mother, dad arrive in their Camry, Omani national vehicle, it seems, and walk on the beach.

The desert is working its magic. Under this sky surrounded by immense rolling sand dunes we feel infinitely small. In India, the transcendent is rendered infinitely accessible and small...rats, monkeys, manifestations of gods everywhere.  In the desert man is small, the transcendent infinitely large.

Dinner is yummy chicken meat ball stew passed through some subtle Indian spices.

OMAN- DECEMBER 23, 2015

I awake. The soft light of the fulling moon turns the onion skin tent into and angular and winged Christmas ornament...and I'm inside it.  I unzip a wall and roll out onto the sand, stand up and welcome the moon. In another day, on Christmas Eve, I think it will be full. Now at 1:02 on the morning of December 23rd it fills the sky with such cool fire that only a few patches of star and planet light survive. My shadow follows me as I walk towards the surf.  The spume of ocean waves catches the moonlight, a rolling visual rhythm to match the sound of the surf, giving a structure to the dark.

The sound of the ocean may be our most ancient rhythm. Geologists say that as soon as the fiery earth cooled more than 4 billion years ago the oceans formed. The sound of waves is the sound of Mother Earth, intrinsic to all life, more ancient than the sound of a heartbeat or breathing. Is this why it is so soothing?

Behind me, the soft, soft breeze creaks my nylon Christmas ornament, still capturing moonlight, still glowing, 'home'.  All else is quiet. There are probably small lizards, or foxes or, less likely, rare insomniac goats, (so catholic in their omnivorous fervor) wandering the beach, attracted by the peelings from last night's dinner preparation. We'll see their tracks in the morning light. We leave nothing behind except our footprints, fuel perhaps for some foxy or goaty musings or storytellings.

06:30 'Morgen Musik' rolls us out of our tents. Hot water and flat ‘non es cafe' almost tempt us from lemon ginger tea. Mueslix, nutella, a few cheeses and bread, and some dinner 'over-lefts' make a good breakfast smorgasbord in the morning light. I think we munch in time to the surf. By 8 we've broken camp, wrapped up our tents, packed the 2 Toyota 4x4s and are on the road.

Helena's back problem earns her some Tiger Balm plasters and the less bumpy front seat. Dennis, Fritz, and I spread across the roomy back seat. I'm riding center, with a better view straight out the front between the front seats, but jostling when we're off-roading.

The road inland is flat, featureless, Las Vegas before the casinos, but with camels, goats and donkeys. We're promised maybe some flamingoes, here natives, and a swim in a 'sweet water' pool, and more beach camping. Tonight will be our 5th beach night and our last for a while.

'Pink lagoon' does have flamingoes, 16 of them, in the distance a vaguely pinkish smudge until they take flight, flapping white and pale, pale, pale rose.

I look down at the sand. We're not the first here. The path is a jumble of tracks of the real inhabitants of the beach: smooth heart shaped camel tracks, scurrying tracks of tiny mice, softly furred fox tracks, precisely pointed tracks of delicate goat feet, rippling parallel lines of lizard feet, the triumvirate streaks of bird/dinosaur claws, have a preemptive claim. Our sandal and bare footprints alien.

Lunch is a triple surprise: One and Two are the scrumptious sandwiches, veggies, or chicken wrapped in tender thin, thin, thin and flaky pita bread. Number Three? A man pays for our lunch bill, for all 10 of us, smiles, waves, and leaves to our chorus of 'shukran', thank you. Hospitality towards strangers is a pillar of Islam, taken seriously.

The day gets even better with a few hours lounging in and around a fresh water pool fed by the drip-drip of an almost waterfall. Many, many kilometers from any town, visited only by rare campers, it is maintained by the government with the usual Omani touch for detail.  Two welcoming workers are laying a pathway of native stone. It fits. The setting is spectacular, in a layered gorge, patient geology, frozen time.

We camp on sand backing against low cliffs. We are far from the surf, but not its sound. The cliffs provide plenty of 'privacy spots’. Nearer the surf all is flat and open. There is no place to 'make a private telephone call with mother nature '. We would we be visible....and in Cinemascope.

We sit in the light of the setting sun. Helena is peeling garlic.  Kris is slicing carrots and tomatoes for salad. Yellow lentils soak in water and catch a hint of the sunset. They will become our main course.

OMAN-December 24, 2015

Wadi Rauch. The earth simply stops and drops thousands of feet into the haze. Directly eastward moisture and fog turn the sun into a brilliant moon disk, gold turned to silver.

The sun rises to the rhythm of the surf through the haze into a pale blue. It is Christmas Eve in the desert. Ever resourceful Kris has a surprise for us: a German stollen, powdered sugar white and fruit- filled.

Tonight and tomorrow night we leave desert camping for hotel beds. Rumor has it that cold beer will be available. Is this an accident of the schedule or a planned Christmas present?

OMAN-December 25, 2015

Who needs gold, frankincense. and myrrh when luscious Yemeni kebabs are on offer for Christmas dinner?

Ten of us inhale 51 skewers of succulent beef morsels and 30 skewers of chunks of chicken marinated to deep Christmas red in a magical mix of spices. Taste buds ooze over bowls of hummus, baba ganoush, eggplant turned into silky confection, stewed beans, grated cabbage and carrot slaw dressed in fresh lime juice. We wrap it all, in various taste-coma-inducing combinations, in pieces of bread, hot from the oven, and torn (right hand only, please) from great 18-inch diameter wheels of wheaty heaven.

We stretch several gluttonous meters down a narrow table, one of many spread under trees at the edge of the spice and incense souk. It's Friday, the 'weekend' in Oman, and the restaurant and souk are busy. It's an easy-going busyness with no pressure to buy the hats, trinkets, and spices on offer.

This is Oman, the Land of Frankincense, and the sweet smoke of that fabled (and Christmas legendary) incense clouds the clean night air. Dried sap of odd little trees that seem happier here in the desert of Oman than anywhere else, frankincense has been Oman's stock in trade for millennia. If those Three Wise Men were truly wise they stopped here on their way to Bethlehem.

Face covered but sporting racy Sophia Loren up swept eye glasses, a substantial matron guides her son through a demonstration of frankincense qualities and uses. The best quality is from the second or third tapping of the sap, so fine it can be eaten as medicine, though I'm a bit fuzzy about its effects when imbibed. Perhaps it perfumes the breath as it does the air through the souk.

A few alleys away from the sweet smell and smoke several of us crowd the few chairs in front of a young man who squeezes liquid heaven out of fresh fruit. I go for my favorite, amber pineapple. Dennis sips softly orange tinted banana-papaya.

Always on the lookout for sensible ethnic clothing---and Christmas present being in short supply--- I draft Nasser to help me pick out a wizar, the wrap around sarong that Omani men wear under their dish-dashes or on their own. (Dennis passes.)

Nasser, always impeccable and elegant, says he has more than 20 in different colors and patterns. I trust his advice on color, quality and price:

Pure cotton and, for desert wear, dark. We pick one in dark blue with silver trim, made in Pakistan and costing 2.5 Rials...adjusted 'just for you, best price 2 Rial’. I pay the $5.20. My Christmas present from Omar will fit right in by the pool in Florida.

(UPDATE: Wizars come in various widths and lengths, as do Omani men, not all of whom are lithe striplings. My wizar turns out to be for an Omani Olympic basketball playing sumo wrestler, Careen-Omar Okimoto, aka El Big Boy, the Dribbling Mountain.  An extra turn around my expanding middle and several extra rolling folds down from my chest and I am well wrapped if not elegantly so. It's a comfy garment for desert camping. My amateur folds survive climbing the dunes around camp.)

All in all, it's a wonderful Christmas, our fourth in a row on adventure: Sudan, Cameroon, Chad, and now Oman. The places alone have been unforgettable desserts in a life already voraciously enjoyed.  My wizar is comfy icing on a fabulous cake.

OMAN-December 26, 2015

I am in Atlantis.

First, some history. Omani have always been great long distance travelers, either in great pointed dhows, their ships of the sea, or overland on camels, their ships of the desert.

The dhows reached all the way to China and perhaps beyond. There are Arabic maps that predate Columbus that seem to show large land masses, south of Indonesia (Australia, anyone?) and way across the Atlantic Ocean (Disneyworld?) Thanks to the Arabs, and maybe the Omanis, Christopher Columbus knew the world was around and there was Something Out There.  (Why else would he sail West to go East?)

For Omanis venturing into the unknown was in the blood. The desert held no fears, so long as water was available.

The Omani had great trade routes across the desert, from oasis to oasis, inland into The Empty Quarter of the vast Sahara and beyond to Egypt and the Mediterranean.

And, so, we come to Atlantis, all a jumble in front of me.

There are three stories here, two wrapped in legend and or faith and sealed by time, one from science, but only slightly less fantastic.

One story is from Islamic scripture, sanctified by faith, and tells of a mighty and rich city swallowed overnight by the sand, the hand of Allah implacable.

The second story is from history-become-legend, verified by retelling, and whispers of lost Ubar, some city rich beyond dreams, a place of pilgrimage for great caravans of thousands of camels laden with frankincense and wealth, somewhere in vastness of The Empty Quarter of the Sahara.

Imagine you have trekked for days, across a great flat nothing, drinking fetid water stored in goat skins. In the distance appears Ubar, cool oasis, people, dates, coconuts, fresh water, other entertainments and diversion. Perhaps your journey ends here, as you pass on your frankincense and gold and precious stuffs from the coast to the next caravan heading even further into the desert. Or you pick up treasures from even deeper in the desert.  Or, you will trek onwards into the Empty Quarter yourself, leading a string of camels.  In any case, Ubar is a Big Deal, big in import, big in impact, big in imagination. You tell the folks back home ' wait till you see Ubar'. And so, the legend grows of a rich and fabled city in the desert. It is already famous by 200AD, when it appears on a map. Then, over a thousand years later it simply disappears.  And becomes the stuff of legend.

Story three is of the last decades of the 20th century. Fascinated by Ubar's legendary wealth and disappearance, amateur archeologist/adventurers apply space age technology---literally---to the search. Using photographs and other records captured by satellite, they discover an odd pattern in the desert sands. The sand is compacted as if trodden upon for centuries and seems to form roads leading towards the spot identified as Ubar on ancient maps. Excavations revealed a sizeable fort with walls and towers and deposits indicating its life over many centuries.

But the biggest discovery smacks of science fiction. Sometime on a day in the 15th century the spring that had given life to Ubar for millennia simply caved in, dropping the entire center of the fort/town into a sinkhole. Fabled Ubar disappeared, swallowed overnight by the desert, an Arabian Atlantis.

And, so, all the stories come full circle and are the same story: a city disappears, swallowed by the desert.

We leave Ubar and head West into The Empty Quarter. We ride on 4 smooth Toyota wheels, not 4 camelid legs, and we have GPS. .and fresh water. And we know what's out there. But it is a grand adventure, nevertheless. We have been to Atlantis.

OMAN-December 27, 2015

Sand and rain

We all awake covered with a fine layer of sand

The night was windy, the dunes shedding their top layer down onto our tents and through the vents.  It's a welcome of sorts, one that sticks with us.

Even though the air is humid and the sky is grey, it is not with clouds. It is sand wafted skyward and slowly drifting earthward. In between sky and earth we move in a scrim of haze.

Radar shows rainclouds riding the winds in our direction. None of this bodes well for our expedition into the Empty Quarter. Rain makes the camel foot favoring surface of the dunes, reluctantly tolerant of wheels under the best circumstances, a nightmare of sand quick to suck our vehicles into immobility.

The humid air coalesces into mist, then drops. It is rain. In the desert.

We must turn back.  And while we are technically in the Rub al Khali, the Empty Quarter we I feel a bit like the Apollo 13 like astronauts who, oh so close, had to turn back from the moon. We will not sit in the shadow of the 1000-foot-tall sand dunes, some of Mother Earth's most stunning offspring.

Das ist Scheiss, says Helena (no translation needed).

Then it hits us. Even more Scheissty will be pitching our tents in the rain.

From our friend Hossein in Iran we have learned ' Make butter out of Scheiss'. And so, we do.

Carefully choosing a route east of the rain, Kris leads us to the 'Baby Dunes’, miniscule eddies compared to the sandy skyscrapers to the west, but still sand dunes and satisfying. We set up camp in a soft---and rainless breeze. For dinner we have spaghetti Bolognese.

When the wind is just right and the angle of the dune slopes is welcoming, it is said the wind can coax the dunes to sing. Perhaps. We all hear something at twilight in the desert. It is at least the sound of infinity. And why would the dunes not sing of that? 

OMAN-December 28, 2015

The Baby Dunes don't whisper, hum or gurgle all night. They are silent, perhaps, even after eons, ensorcelled by the still brilliant waning moon. The east gilds with early sunlight chasing the lunar silver from the west. There are two luminous orbs in the sky.  Every bump in the sand casts a shadow, a landscape of light and dark. Perhaps to ants these are monstrous dunes, and we, inconceivable giants. Feeling tinier still, I look up and across the immense desert swelling against the blue sky into the morning haze, a mote, a speck, a wisp. Once again, I get how the desert spawns awe--- though I don't get the fixation on subservience, control, and intolerance that the three desert religions revel in through structures eons removed from the pure equality of the desert. Maybe the ancient Egyptian Pharaoh Akhenaten and his wife, the beautiful Nefertiti, the first monotheists got it right: worship the sun, dump the priests, and get on with life.

We drive south. I open our backseat mobile supermarket and offer fruit juices (mango, apple, pineapple, guava) and Bob's Desert Mix of cashews, pistachios black currants, golden raisins. It's not Helena's sausage or homemade cookies, Fritz's Schnapps, or Jork's Spanish wine, but it does its bit.

The sands here seem softer, mountains ground into grains, then wind-rubbed into atoms of earth silk, exquisite over our bare feet. Sandals have days ago been relegated to irrelevance somewhere in the cars.

Nasser, always at the ready with fun, or music, or a story, challenges me to a sandy jumping contest. He wins the contest easily by feet---and all of us with his deep basso laugh.

The rains have passed and the Rub al Khali is open to us.

Deep in it, though permanently far from the monstrous thousand foot dunes, we pass unnoticed within a few hundred meters of the border with Saudi Arabia, through an odd landscape of flat pebbly open plateaus alternating with fields of 160-foot-tall dunes. Is this a dune hatchery? If so, it is very successful. Sahara dunes undulate beyond the Rub AL Khali, beyond Saudi Arabia, thousands of miles westward to the Atlantic.

From the top of a tiny dune I do my celebratory desert dune roll down the silken slope, then boom onto the hard flats at the bottom, then roll again for the shutter bugs. Slightly gilded by the sand I spend a few hours as a real El Dorado, the Golden One.

We break for lunch and then stay put to set up camp early in the afternoon. It's a perfect spot. Baby Dunes grown into titans ripple as far as we can see in all directions. Alone atop a razor-backed dune I wrap my wizar against the soft breeze. Sunwards the dune sides have bronzed and are sinking into darkness. Eastward the slopes glow still, capturing sunlight. From far away tiny figures head back to camp in the fading light. Tea, and maybe dates, will begin our 'Abendessen', dinner, ritual, shared food taking us into the desert night.

OMAN-December 29, 2015

Inspired by all this Sahara, I half dream of me in February, fully kitted out in Sarasota Opera Ancient Egyptian garb, triumphantly marching in Aida. Delusions of spears and loincloths are tunefully interrupted by the 06:30 Morgen Music, peppy but minimally triumphal. Cushioned and comfy in our silk and polyester sleeping sheet and bag, we are protected by the work of worms and the legacy of long-dead dinosaurs from the chill of the desert night.

 German syllables float across the sand. We are not the first up.

The sand slips over my bare feet, cool and smooth as water, as I walk down our Baby Dune to breakfast. The moon is high, the light soft, the sun warming in its rise, the 'non es Cafe' as dreadful as always, but hot. The Omani seem to have forgotten that Arabs ought to take their coffee seriously. It was Arabs who carried the gift of real coffee to the world from its homeland in Ethiopia. But, NOOOOO. Nescafe reigns in all its shoddy, odd tasting, erzatzness. But, it is hot balm on a chilly desert morning. Almost.

After so many days together the 10 of us make and break camp in a flash. Wash up of the dishes and pots is the centerpiece, now dubbed 'The Washing Show’, starring (usually) Helena and Trudel. On schedule---as always---we head off at 8.  As on every morning Chris sends the walkers on ahead to be picked up in 20 or 30 minutes ‘out there'.  We head 'out there' across pebbly flats between dunes tall enough to have only a tenuous claim on Babyhood. Barefoot is NOT a good decision.

The drive is uneventful today. Neither car roars over a dune into sandy immobility. We get no exercise pushing the cars out of sand traps. We cross flats, and dunes, on macadam, gravel and sand. When we leave paved roads for the dunes Chris and Nasser release air from the tire, semi-flattening them for better travel on the sands. They replump them when we leave the dunes, either at a gas station or with carry-along compressors. Tire time is also toilet time, easier in the dunes than the flats, and, for the men, always.

We are promised great food for Mittagessen and it materializes on the restaurant's buffet table. Indian in inspiration but percolated through the Omani preference for seasoned but not hot, it is bowls of richly and subtly flavored vegetable or meat dishes to be partnered with softly sautéed rice. The bread, pure. Indian, is, of course, wonderful. The owner, friend of Kris, snaps photos of his table of 10 polyglot gluttons inhaling his food.

At the market next-door, Dennis and I restock our mobile supermarket with ingredients for our grab bag mixture of back seat yummies: roasted cashews, raisins, dried apricots, only slightly cheaper than in the US, but delicious car food, especially when washed down with pineapple, mango, or guava drinks. Anything else you would eat, wear, furnish your house or car, or kill mosquitoes with, is available, packaged in both Arabic and English. Think CVS or Walgreen' s with dishy and dashing Omani men in their stylish dish-dashes and embroidered pillbox hats or smashing head scarves to add some ethnic...and much appreciated...color. Usually we only see men shopping in these rural stores, though we have seen many women in the souks. Today there were women in the store, a few covered, a few not. We don't stare.

By midafternoon the landscape is flat beyond flat, stretched taut, stapled to the horizon, the gold of the sand attenuated to beigey white. To entertain us as we cross the flatness, Nasser revs up the radio with Arabic songs, irresistible in their strange key and energy. He and I do an impromptu dance in the front seat, shoulders, four arms and hands aflutter, enthusiastically, if jerkily, approximating the rhythm. The back seat laughs. The car steers itself. Flatness is good.

At about 4pm, wrinkles appear at the edge of the flat, our dunes for the night. I think we set a new record setting up camp, tents included.

We lounge on pillows to watch the setting sun gild, then darken, the desert. The stars begin to brighten the sky. The almost full moon, brilliance borrowed from the sunken sun, will rise over profound blackness on the desert, light-giver here below, but eater of starlight above. Until then, tiny, we watch bits of starlight arrive from incomprehensible distance.

Some of us sip tea.

OMAN-December 30, 2015

We are walking on the sea floor.

SCUBA gear is not required. We've missed the water by several million years. The immense Sahara was once a shallow tropical sea.  Ancient coral and seashells, massaged by time into angular and white outcroppings. contrasts to the soft golden dunes, are proof of how life teemed life in those warm waters.

In some places marine fossils jumble the surface. I found a shark's tooth in the White Desert of Egypt and this morning found a fossil spiral sea she'll captured in a piece of dark rock, two gifts from the past, separated by thousands of miles of space and millions of years of time. Both have rested in my hand, then my pocket.

Sharp ridges and angles are short-lived before the desert wind. Ever opportunistic, it sandpapers the layers of soft limestone into fantasy shapes. Tall and top heavy mushrooms are currently in fashion, but other shapes are nascent, hinted at, Imagined, slowly rubbed and massaged out of ancient sea bed.

We approach Nizwa, hotelled home for the last night of 2015. We pass neighborhoods of the angular Omani houses, thick walled, and white, adaptations to the 120-degree summertime heat. The flat roofs offer optimistic summer night refuges into cooler air. I suspect they're a bit like camping on a griddle. In December the weather is perfect, roofs unoccupied.

It's bathroom sink laundry day. Clothes would zap-dry in the sunlight outside, but I make do with overnight slow-dry on hangers in front of the aircondtioner.

And, then I shower. The desert air doesn't make our skin sticky or the rest funky, but it does coat us in sand.  Water, clean, hot, cascading water is in great supply in Oman hotels. I use vast amounts to send my sandy gilding back to the desert. 

Chris' bubbly wife and some friends join us for a buffet of Omani-Indian deliciousness, preceded by an unfortunate version of tomato soup, and followed by flaccid crème brule.  We appreciate  both efforts, culinary partners to Nescafe.  In between, however was heaven.

Our Abend Briefing lays out the schedule for the last day of 2015.

And, then we sleep.

OMAN-December 31, 2015

Do you ride horses?

Cross language conversations trippingly navigate non-sequiturs. This one stops the conversation dead in its tracks.

We are sitting on a mat (my legs bent in ways nature never intended, but camels attempted) drinking REAL coffee, and munching on dates in front of a cloth store deep in the souk in Nizwa, Oman. I have found my white wrap-around wizars and the white-bearded and dish-dashed venerable owner, all smiles and Omani hospitality, has just demonstrated the RIGHT way to tie one to make the folds wrap elegantly rather than look like a pile of last week's laundry. (UPDATE: the technique still mostly eludes me but I might be able to claim progress from last week's laundry to yesterday's.)

Excellent English is common, especially among shop keepers, but we share no language other than smiles and good will. 4 Rials change hands and then those same hands gesture clearly to the mat, coffee and dates. And so, we fold up and down, with inappropriate---but oh so predictable--- sound effects and supreme gracelessness, joining our white bearded host, Wizar Guy, and 2 friends, the Coffee Buddies, who execute the same maneuvers with grace--and silence. The coffee resembles Nescafe only in color. The Omanis DO get coffee, after all. Rather weak, but flavored with cardamom, the tiny cups reek of the exotic and are delicious.

A young man walks by, says hello and folds gracefully (and gruntless) onto the mat. He doesn't know Wizar Guy or the Coffee Buddies any more than we do, but Omani mat and coffee hospitality is all absorbent. A guide for Italian tourists, his English is also excellent and so he becomes our linguistic and cultural ambassador.

The very FIRST question is the usual 'are you brothers'. This has happened so often you'd think we'd have a clever response. Dennis points to his nose and my schnozz as proof of no shared DNA, but that carries no relevant clarification in a nation of many nose types. We settle for 'old friends', resonant in this male-oriented culture.

The next question? Do you ride horses?

Even Translator Guy loses it over this non-sequitur. A flurry of throaty Arabic syllables uncovers the reason for the question: our hats, floppy brimmed for sun protection and many stylistic leaps from the graceful cascades of cloth of the head scarves or the neat head hugging silhouette of the jaunty embroidered and neatly brimless Omani pillboxes. Wizar Guy has seen too many bad westerns. Fortunately, neither of our hats is black.

Clarified about our lack of equestrian activities (I refrain from any mention of experiences atop camels), he laughs, shrugs, offers more coffee, and gets down to the real meaty question that will give us a place in his world: age (he's 70, his Coffee Buddy 55, Translator Guy is 30.) I win that one but lose on marital status and children. Translator Guy laughs and says he is single and likes his freedom. I suspect he keeps it by running faster than the middle-aged Italians he leads around.

Social graces performed, Coffee Buddy leaves.  We retrieve our legs, unfold and struggle to the vertical (almost grunt-free) as Translator Guy says, 'we all want peace in the world', shakes our hands and goes off to outrun his Italians.

Wizar Guy grasps our hands in both of his, a universal gesture, free of language, and waves us goodbye.  We take with us the taste of real Omani coffee and the memory of the genuinely welcoming “sit a bit”, share some coffee and dates and tell me about yourself mat and coffee hospitality of Muslim culture. Will they believe us back home?

I wonder if Wizar Guy's version is that we don't fold very well, make odd sounds, wear funny hats, think we're cowboys, but don't know zilch about horses, and are hopeless at folding a wizar. No matter. He'll have a good laugh, and perhaps that's a step closer to the peace Translator Guy hopes for.

The last day of 2015 had other surprises. The souk of Nizwa is everything a Middle Eastern market should be: alleys leading to exoticisms for the eyes and other senses, air redolent of spices, fresh fruits, vegetables and nuts in cornucopia excess. I sample several qualities of dates, the best glistening with a patina of natural syrup, so perfect a distillation of desert sunlight that I think these must surely be what Eve used to tempt Adam. Poor guy only got one bite.

We learn how to make halvah, the Mid East's supreme sweet confection and how to make deepest blue indigo dye, the Mid East's supreme gift to color vision. In Nizwa Fort we learn a use for date syrup: heat it to boiling and pour it onto the heads of the day's invaders.

In between we sip pineapple, mango, lemon-mint juice in Abubakar's tree-shaded cafe at the edge of the souk.

A few feet away, in a space barely wider than an old Singer, the souk's sewing machine man clicks and clacks away repairing the machines that keep the scores of made to measure clothing shops open. Ready-made, off the rack just doesn't do for Omani men who always look perfectly turned out, their dish-dashes fresh, unsullied and unwrinkled. We suspect they have a new one made if the current one dares to wrinkle.

Germans and Austrians call New Year's Eve Sylvester, and like us, celebrate, often raucously. None of us votes for assaulting our eardrums. Chris arranges an appropriate celebration of Sylvester and send-off for 2015 that goes straight for the taste buds.

Because I am kind, I will leave out the details of that last meal of 2015, heavily in debt to the cuisine of Lebanon and to Jork's Spanish wine. Saliva is not good for cell phones or keyboards.

Most of us were in bed by 9. A mini-skirted bartender figured in the activities of some of the others, but what happens in Oman stays in Oman.

Nizwa. Fort. Date syrup. murder holes

Indigo process

Silver jewelry

Sylvester celebration passed up...bar hostess in mini skirt. In bed by 9.

OMAN-January 1, 2016

Breakfast can wait.

We're off at 7 to catch the goat events at the Friday cattle and goat market.

We are unfed, but primed for An Event.  And we find it.

Chris and Nasser shoehorn our cars between 2, already goat-full, the load of firewood on Nasser's like 'Land Ho' in this sea of identical white 4x4s. Around us is pandemonium, dish-dashed, arm waving, bearded, bleating pandemonium. It's our kind of place.

Sellers parade their shaggy wares, most of whom look not quite up for an early morning beauty pageant. I wonder if goats really are into mornings. On the sidelines, many have dozed off in the mayhem, solid and piebald heaps of brown, black, white. A tiny one, deeply asleep, snuggles in the arms of its human, who pets it gently. New purchase or farewell?   Pasture or pot?

A matched pair of baby goats, barely an armful each, puppy-cute with the jaunty curiosity of their kind, and clearly Out to Have a Good Time, follow their new human out of the mayhem. To pot or pasture? Too cute for either....

Way ahead of us on this one, Chris says we have NO room for any four-footed passengers.

There are other tourists, jeaned, dish-dashed, from away and local. A group of tourist girls in hijab---and jeans---giggles by. They are clearly not from Oman.  It's hard to tell who is with whom. Most people are fixated on taking 'selfies’, the latest invention that keeps other people at a distance, to make them unnecessary.

Nizwa, 'Cultural Center of Islam' continues to entertain us. It's a lovely city, low white buildings tinged at sunrise and sunset, and in between cleansed brilliant white under a sky awash in indigo.

After the mayhem of Goats R Us, eyes and ears are soothed in the quiet of Jabreen Castle, Oman's biggest.  Thick bare walls of desert sand gold, subtly painted ceilings, soft carpets and softer still, silken pillows, rooms uncluttered and bare, reveal a purity of design, clear, like the desert itself.  Think the 6Indian forts after a thorough sweep-through by Mother Theresa's decorating team, Austerity Is Us.

The rambling interior stairwells and sharp angles were for defense, successful because Jabreen has never been conquered. It conquers us.

This is a day away from nature, deep in the ancient or abandoned. We wander the empty paths of Bahli, long deserted village. Amidst the crumbling mud and brick the only color comes from the old metal doors, double wide and in pairs, often hanging open, aged to copper verdigris patina. It feels invasive to peek through them, uninvited.

Late afternoon we make camp high in the mountains, thoughts of forts and other human handiwork erased by spacious views, then starlight.

OMAN-January 2, 2016

'It's a 1000 meter (3300 foot) drop straight down. Do me a favor and don't go too near the edge'. 

And so, Chris prepares us for the Grand Canyon of Oman, truly a canyon and doubly truly a staggeringly grand jagged one, a rip through the highest mountains of northern Oman. It's a giant earth maw, teethed, open and voracious. Way down in the depths a dry river bed, gargled dry under the Omani sun and not yet refreshed by monsoon rains, suggests water had some role in creating this monster. Nasser shows me a video of a man who strapped glider wings to his arms and threw himself into that maw, softening his safe landing with a parachute. 'Craaaazy', says Nasser, to universal agreement.

Across the road, two women and two text book hugging---and very pretty--- girls sell simple braided bracelets and key chains. 'Sheep wool, real colors'. I select one but can't quite manage the pull through loop that will keep it on my wrist. ' For man, for man' she says, pointing at Dennis. Of course!  She can't help, can't touch a strange man. Dennis obliges. She smiles.

I buy 2, one black and white to ‘natural colors', one red and white, to silence, and bargain for some multi-strand woolen keychains, backpack and sleeping bag zipper pulls to be. It's no big deal that they are vastly overpriced at 1 Rial apiece, about $2.60, for simple twists of wool (given that the sheep get no commission). We've put some cash in the hands of local women.

Nearby, black, white and brown (natural colors, all), shaggy piles of trinkets and rugs of the future, munch on whatever it is they munch on, oblivious in that blank eyed sheepy way.

Animals began the day for us, donkey brayings rumbling down the rocky slope above our camp just after sunrise. Sheep and goats followed, conversing in baaaas and coughs, mutton music slowly disappearing into the hills.

Far from the ocean and desert we are deep into the mountainous middle of Oman. Jebel Mishot looks like Gibraltar, a massive headland jutting into a sand sea. Traditional villages of local stone disappear against the rocky background of the same stone as their walls, the defense of invisibility perhaps best of all.

Flocks of alert goats and baffled sheep are puffs of softness amidst the stones. Where there are water cool groves of date palms dapple the landscape, shady, columnar, arching over huge quiet spaces, nature's Gothic cathedrals. We walk through one, near the village of Al Hamra, partially deserted but sporting Lexuses ( Lexi? Lexen?), Avalons, 4x4 Toyotas...and goats.  Baby goats in the shadows do their vertical stiff-legged leaps, endearing as puppies. Lexus and company remain pompously earthbound.

We drop and climb, drop and climb, ending in a field of dust below the astounding mountain of Al Ain (the one in Oman, not the one in the Emirates). On a ridge overlooking this stupefying monolith and way above a dry river bed are round stone towers, tombs already ancient when the pyramids were built 4,500 years ago. This is a special place. We all feel it and stay late into the afternoon watching the sunset slowly heat the mountain and tombs to glowing.

Other senses dominate the sunset hours. Jorg has discovered ecstasy at 'The Date Factory' in the nearby village and one taste of his lode of pleasure fuels a dusty stampede from the mountain.

The Date Factory is a tiny shop run by two young, charming, handsome, and divinely inspired Indian guys who marry ground dates with rose water and cardamom, then roll the mixture into perfectly bite-sized balls and upholster them with sesame seeds.

I may never again experience a date from heaven, but I have now experienced heaven from a date.

OMAN-January 3, 2016

The thick dust poofs into clouds around my greyed bare feet as I fold myself out of the tent and into the growing light. Dressed and fitted out for the day (camera, hat) I head out to find my personal 'loo with a view'. Task accomplished, the view of the immense monolith and tombs emerging into daylight takes over and I click away. Does this make my 'loo with a view' a 'crapper with a snapper'?

The others straggle by, stirring up the dust, for one last look at this stupendous place.

A covey of school kids erupts from a van delivering them from remote villages to school in this village. The littlest is baby goat size, wide-eyed, and wider-smiled, and skipping by in his mini dish-dash and pillbox hat as he hellos us into smiles of our own. Even the older girls, lovely in colored head scarves, get into the act, hello and hi rippling across the road. Face uncovered, the black clad teacher walks past without a comment. We allow her isolation, turn away in silence.

Today we continue north and transit the Tropic of Cancer, passing the latitude of Cuba and approaching the latitude of our home in Florida.  It's a 500-kilometer blitzkrieg drive to Oman's disconnected northern territory, Musandam, to our final two camps.

To get there we hopscotch the borders between Oman and the various Emirates several times, passing through border procedures each time until our passports are thoroughly scrutinized and repeatedly visa-ed by both countries.

The multiple border procedures are, as always, semi-incomprehensible and complicated. At the first Oman-Emirates crossing, Emirati Immigration Lady (robed, but face uncovered), discovers immediately that I have been to the Emirates before, on another passport 2001, but takes an hour and a half to process the 10 of us.  Chris and Nasser take charge and we pass muster again and again between Oman and the various Emirates.  When we're turned back at one border ('sorry, we're closed') they backtrack and go waaaaay around to another. The time lost means a late and perhaps nighttime arrival at the campsite.  It would have been easier to swim around the Emirates from Oman South to Oman North, but by land we get a tour of the Emirates, a sort of Disneyland of Excess, Mid-East style.

 The Emirates' attractions unfold. The seven Emirates look like Oman but with even more money, much of it on display, at least in Abu Dhabi and Dubai, the wealthiest of the seven. Consumption is neon-light conspicuous. The roads are lines of Lexi, avalanches of Avalons, and masses of Mercedes. A shame-faced Corolla, poor thing, sticks to the shadow of a very big Jeep Cherokee.

The elegant, formal, clipped landscaping and flowers along the roads, and fountains spurting into the dry desert air, must require constant care (thank you poorly paid Indians, Bangladeshis, Filipinos....) and oceans of fresh water. The Emirates make both.

The endless road has its bennies, the best being toilets. Oman's spotless gas stations (and their toilets) are rivaled only by the impeccably clean Omani men and their wrinkleless dish-dashes. They also stock mountains of tooth ache inducing snacks and ‘juice products' squeezed from the overflowing fruit basket of Oman's gardens, and, alas, through chemical factories. Still, the guava, pineapple, mango, berry, lemon, pomegranate drinks leap into our market baskets. The chemicals probably help.

We stop to fuel the cars and explore the aisles of goodies. We pass up the Cheetos and Snickers, US contributions to global bad teeth and expanding waistlines. Dennis and I discover the Triple Chocolate Ice Cream Bars. Nutritional high horses gallop out the door. One cold, luscious, mouthful induces deeply chocolate tongue nirvana. 4 other dusty campers notice our eyes glaze over and rumble through the door to attack the freezer. Two purists stick with real coffee. Six of us glow with chocolated, and alas, sugared bliss. Two get their bliss from a caffeine high. We tell ourselves that a hit of pomegranate juice will restore the nutritional balance, but really don't care.

Our first foray into Fast Food after 2 weeks of REAL food however, does not invoke nirvana. Emirati fast food is just as cardboard as it is anywhere. We go for 'meals' based on pictures and savory descriptions. Dennis' chicken THIGH sandwich tastes no different than my chicken THAI sandwich. Both drag our taste buds into a black hole of flavorlessness. The coke is flat. The sugar cane juice is unnecessarily and cloyingly adulterated with sugar, robbing it of its natural gift of refreshment. The fries are hot at least. The tabbouleh, green and lemony, is excellent, though. The lesson? Go local, even fast food wise.

As we go north towards the tip of Oman the mountains are spectacular. And the road endless. We drive on. The Emirates didn't look this big on the map.

At 5:15 we clear the last border and are back in Oman, in Masandam. Mountains to our right, the Persian Gulf and the Straits of Hormuz to our left, waters light-struck by the late afternoon sun, our road is a narrow ribbon between the two. We are so close to Iran we could almost throw his favorite cookies to our 'Cookie Monster' friend, Hossein.

We pitch camp in the dark, a first for us. Chris creates a ramen and veggie concoction of extravagant smells. The table tilts, hits the beach, taking our dinner with it. True rescues the top few inches of the beached pile of noodles, leaving the rest for the goats, who apparently sniff and keep going. It’s still there in the morning. Enough is rescued for all 10 of us to sample and mourn. Cheese and bread fill any stomachs short changed by the accident.

OMAN-January 4, 2016

I'm floating in the Straits of Hormuz. A strong wind could sail me across to Iran, 20 miles away, just below the horizon. Whatever the murky politics of the Straits, the water is crystalline, nature undoing politics.

We have a free morning to soak in the blue, reward for yesterday's 500-kilometer birder hopping marathon, and our new status in the Tent Rearing Olympics.

Held up by our border hopscotch, we arrived at our beach camp site after dark and well into the post sunset winds. Two weeks ago, it took four of us to set up a tent in a brisk breeze in full sunlight. Now, two of us whip the tents from rolled up to set up (and secure and cozy) in a mini-typhoon. In the dark.

Is there a Traveler Merit Badge, or Olympic medal, with our names on it? Will headlamps disqualify us? I'd accept the Bronze Medal, even the Tin Foil.

Surrounded on 3 sides by water, Musandam should claim fish as its own. It can and does. Lunch is firm and white and delicately fried 2 inch by 4 inch by 1 inch steaks of King Fish. So fresh it swims onto our plate and nestles against two kinds of rice, chopped salad with coriander and lemon juice, two sauces, one hinting of a liaison with coconut milk...and fresh, warm, flaky Indian bread, so light the fish sits on it to keep it on the plate. Drinks are fresh mango juice.

Besotted and drooling, we place an order for several whole baked King Fish for tomorrow night. They'll catch them tomorrow.

Lunchtime entertainment is Nasser 's turn as an ‘ice skater' on the smooth tile floor. He prefers the big rink of the real stuff in Dubai. It's real ice. In the desert. Ice. Like I said, they have a LOT of money hereabouts.

Today we climb. Musandam is all jutting rock rising abruptly from the waters and we're headed for the summit. Are the waters the Persian Gulf, or, the Gulf of Oman, or, the Straits of Hormuz? Cartographers and politicians may argue and draw with their pens, and egos, but I see no harsh lines marring the blue. And, the fish don't care.

The drop to Khor Najd fjord is 1000 feet.  The water is even deeper blue than the sky, sapphire flirting with indigo. Above the fjord the mountains tilt, sandstone layers slipping back into earth at 30 degrees.  From our aerie high above, the serpentine shoreline and shifting light of this blue canyon-seeking tongue of the sea is Rorschach geology, evocative, suggestive, dream-provoking.

We ascend a rocky, butt-jarring road to Jebel Harim, Women Mountain. No one knows why it has that name, or needs to, perhaps. It's isolated and oversees the world around it, so maybe that's the connection to womanhood. Fossil starfish in galactic numbers cover a long stretch of flat, vertical rock.  Victims of some communal shallow sea calamity eons ago, they're messengers from the past: this was once sea, and rich with life, and may be so again.

We camp high in the mountains amidst the rocks. Goats visit the camp, inspect the morning's drying swimwear, hung on rocks, inadvertently at just the right goat-height, but past up the salty, though chewy, morsels, and wander off with an occasional goaty baaaaa-mutter about the slim pickings.

It's our last night camping. It’s a cold night up so high, though not a windy one, like our first camp night weeks ago. We eat especially well. Aluminum wrapped packages of Chris' luscious veggie medley and chicken slowly stew on embers that are coaxed into a valedictory campfire later after we ooh and ahh Chris' masterpiece down hungry gullets, our last camp dinner. A day long cruise in the Persian Gulf on an ancient Omani dhow and three nights in hotels will seem odd after our land locked and outdoor adventures. We're promised dolphins. And showers.

OMAN-January 5, 2016

The dolphins are pale burnished silver pendants hanging in the blue sea. They rise from the depths, silver catching more and more light until they arc out into full light, brilliant and substantial They are as photographs in a dark room, leaping into clarity from the magic liquid.

These are beautiful creatures, sleek, their movements an effortless wave of energy, rippling through the parting waters. They race our dhows, first three then five, then more, called perhaps by the whistles of the crew or by some silent (to human ears) dolphin invitation to fun. And it looks as if they are riding with us out of sheer enjoyment, at least to our human-bound senses. Why else expend such energy?

When they veer off, bored, or seduced by some other porpoise purpose, we lose a connection to the sea. And regret it as we settle back onto the soft pillows, on the rug, on the wooden deck, on the dhow, once again separate from the water world beneath us. Later we leap from the dhow, graceless, and float in the clear water, mammals once again in the sea. Perhaps what we saw as play was the dolphin invitation for us to join them. I wonder if they comment on our return?

Much earlier and much inland, we awoke high above the distant sea, in the cold of the mountains... and not quite alone.

Morning Goat tap taps around our tents and s very disappointed. 

Close inspection of the camp gets her no scrappy dinner or breakfast over lefts. We're way too neat for her needs. In bearded disapproval, she tap taps her alert way back through the rocks to better pastures...if pebbles are on her menu. Goats are famously democratic eaters, but what is there up here among the crags at 2300 feet? This is a greenless world. Still, they thrive, robust and shaggy, and produce those engaging spring-legged, wind-up toy babies.

We almost thrive during the cold night and envy the goats' shaggy overcoats as the temperature drops, challenging the low temperature rating of our sleeping bags.

The tin-cupped Nescafe warms our hands if not our taste buds.

Morning Goat returns with a posse of scroungers leading their human, in tee shirt and short wazir. He should be frozen blue, but glows a healthy mahogany in the penumbra of the sunrise. He and Nasser trade clusters of Arabic phrases, repeated, and necessary questions about provenance and family wellness, converting strangers into guests. He smiles at us, fans us with the five spread fingers Omani wave of hello, and follows the goats.

Then the sun crests the mountain and floods us with light and welcome warmth, nature's anti-Nescafe. We walk in the sunlight for an hour, snaking through the mountains. Some slopes look melted, and covered with an odd scrim, lithic lace. Others are Swiss cheesed with caves, ancient dwellings or current goat pens. People---and goats--- have lived in these unpromising mountains for eons. I suspect the goats can survive without people. I'm not so sure the reverse is true.

Hours later on the dhow, post dolphins and our brief return to the sea, thoroughly and well dined, we lounge in various states of somnolence. No matter what wrap style I try, my wizar twists into a pile of laundry disarray. I've gone from seriously rumpled to derelict. No matter, says I, my pants are almost dry. That's when we notice the big blank spot on the clothes line where my salty pants used to hang out.

'Can't we just say that Messy Laundry’ is the latest look from the salons of Milan and Paris' says I. 'Not in that wizar' says Nasser, when we get to the elegant hotel, shaking his head, but gracious enough to not laugh...too hard. 'Sorry, no room at the inn' reception desk smiles and sends us to their sister hotel., seriously abbreviating my reputation as a fashion icon.  it's suggested in some level of jest that, in my bizarre wizar incarnation, it’s best if everyone else gets a room at the hotel before I appear. That works. (UPDATE: our reservations are in fact at the second place to start with.)

Its Fritz's birthday and he invites all for beer back at the original hotel. Unwizar-ed, showered, spiffed, and sniffed, I pass muster. The beers are cold, usuriously expensive but a ticket to the Underside, the clientele is Omani men seriously breaking several major injunctions of Islam.

If playing pool while ever so slightly tipsy isn't one, it ought to be.

Bent over the pool table, cinemascope bottom in high definition, and about to assault the 8 ball,  the pudgy Omani playboy is not playing his best shot. Too much paunch, too little dish-dash, raggedy, shoulder length, shaggy, and dirty looking hair (who's his barber, Morning Goat?) and a baseball cap shoot the image of the lithe, suave and sultry Desert Hunk. He doesn't make his pool shot either. I feel positively elegant.

OMAN-January 6, 2016

'Happy Birthday' ---and birthday cake--are the same in Arabic, German, and English, even at 8am. Thus, we launch Fritz' Geburtstag day. This is our second in a row with him, an embryonic tradition we look forward to nurturing.

And then we launch another 500-kilometer blitzkrieg drive southward across Oman and the Emirates. This time the border crossings are silken, almost non-events, so we make great time.

By 10 am we border hopscotch into the Emirates,  Land of Lexus and Land cruisers, car washes, power gyms, signs and shops offering the essentials of Emirati consumerism: vacation villas, kitchen remodeling boutiques (Italian marble in stock), carpets from Iran, ugly enough to really be from China, (where whole industries are based on a national Lust for the Tasteless), huge landscaping plants, all the best (of course) 'tyre' brands under one roof, elaborate and decorative  made to order steel gates, and on and on. A dishy and sun-glassed dish-dasher dashes by in his reddish Corvette. The scent of money wafts.

Our last lunch together before Nasser leaves us offers something new: shrimp masala. Coupled with yogurt sauce, and rice drifted with raisins, carrots and crispy fried onion threads, it’s a spicy and delectable way for crustaceans to travel from sea to taste buds. Dennis goes for the fish, a crisped steak from something big, morning-fresh, and delicious. Why can't we get seafood like this in Florida?

The ever-interesting Nasser talks about his experience with drugs. Someone gave him a cigarette laced with hashish.  He got 'addicted' and smoked for a year. His father caught him, beat him. He stopped.

We say our goodbyes to him with hugs, an envelope of tips, and genuine emotion. He has been great company for 3 weeks, always funny and informative. I thank him for not laughing too much at my wizar.

The hotel welcomes us back and the cafe across the street beckons. The hazy menu picture of Spicy Garlic Chicken takes 20 minutes to materialize as 3 skewers of perfectly marinated, seasoned, and grilled delectable chunks of tender, juicy chicken. The tabbouleh is green, green, green, and fresh, fresh, fresh, a parsley apotheosis trickled with fresh lime. Morning Goat and her minions would give up her pebbles for a mouthful. The affable waiter, jeaned, not dish-dashed, assures us he made it just for us. Lemon mint juice is a virgin and very green mint julep, without the bourbon, and with LOTS of mint ground up in it, thus the green. This one we try back home. WITH the bourbon, at least once. 

It's odd to eat without the other 8. We've all dispersed to deal with the 'Last Day' stuff. For us, tonight, that's digesting our huge meal, avoiding any decisions about laundry, happily postponing repacking, unpacking, repacking, and hoping zippers hold on our magical backpacks and daypacks for one more trip.  We wonder why we have 4 packages of dates to schlepp back across 9 time zones and several seas, then remember each place and reason. Why else do we accumulate hostages when we travel?

Vague plans for tomorrow include a walk down to the seaside to sip fruit juice and wander the souk....and/or a possible morning visit to the Royal Opera House Muscat (ROHM, pronounced as in all roads lead to), spectacular in design. We'll miss performances of 3 Donizetti operas by a few days, including one of my favorites, ‘Mad Lucy Kills Her New Husband and Nails A few High E-flats Along the Way’. This operatic carelessness has become a travel theme for us. We've skirted the opera schedule in Paris, Milan, Madrid, the 5 Stans, and now Muscat. Some serious schedule checking might be a good idea before the next trip. Is there an opera season in Nairobi, or Addis Ababa, or Djibouti, Somaliland, Rwanda or Burundi? I'd even endure another performance of Carmen to hear it sung in Swahili, or Amharic. (I heard snippets of it once in Korean and thought the guttural, consonant-rich Korean fit the plot and music better than the vowel-rich and consonant poor euphony of French.)

But, first, sleep. In a bed.

OMAN-January 7, 2016

'It will look darker if it gets wet' chuckles the Happy Buddha in the Plus Size dish dash, purveyor of trim, fringe, and a mind-boggling variety of braids and borders, enough to trim the entire cast of a year's worth of Indian mega-musicals.  We're wandering the Muscat souk and are seduced down a branch devoted to cloth and the things you can sew on or hang from it.  We're in Oman, but the colors and textures are pure India, riotous, and rich.

There has to be a reason to capture some of this glory for home, and I find it.  There are two lengths of blue patterned cloth from Cameroon doing duty as bedspreads in the guestroom and aching to be finished off with a snazzy border. None of the fringes are the right color---specifics culled from memory---but we find a simple flat and cursive piece, dirt cheap, and close enough....and buy the whole 25 meters for $8.  I'll do the Betsy Ross step myself. Tassels may be involved.

We sit on the Mutrah Corniche, Muscat's oceanfront avenue, sipping lemon mint and mango juices. Several cruise ships have vomited immense loads of inappropriately dressed Westerners, many regional winners of a spot on Real Walmart Shoppers, the Very Wide Screen version.

I permit myself a silent rant:

Ladies and gentlemen, how hard is it to cover your shoulders and knees? Or, ladies, how hard is it to wear a mid-thigh length over-blouse or jacket? All of the above would make your dress more culturally appropriate and much more respectful. You're guests, not invaders.

The Corniche, when free of the cruise ship flotsam and jetsam, as it was 3 weeks ago on our first night in Oman, is a lovely place, a long curve, the sea on one side, the souk nestled against the mountains on the other. An ancient stone fort controls the heights but shares eye space with the turquoise dome and minaret of the seaside mosque. I wonder if the absurd attire of the cruise ship flotsam is partial explanation for the 'Muslims Only' sign on the mosque. Most mosques are welcoming to all respectful visitors (no shoulders, knees, butts, shoes, and please remember this is a house of worship, not just your Selfie Spot).

The shops sell the usual tourist stuff mixed with stuff Omanis and local ex-pats from India, Pakistan, and places north, south, east and west need or want. There is no hard sell, just a gentle display of wares over brown arms, and a soft urging to 'step inside my shop'. Big sellers for foreigners are cloth from India, Omani pillbox hats, spices and incense, and cheap reproductions of beautiful curved traditional Omani knives. We're guilty only on Count Number One, and roll 3 thin cotton, brilliantly colored scarves into my day pack, additional flurries for that guestroom.

A toilet would be useful, and now that we're back in civilization, a handy bush just won't pass muster. In the flowered park that skirts the sea we spy one of those Dr. WHO space age public toilet cylinders we last saw in Paris. Against all odds, I find two 25 Baisa coins (about 13 cents) in my wallet.  I insert them, as directed in several written languages, pictures, and recorded instructions. Whoosh! The door slides away and I enter an immaculate space with all the required devices. Done, I follow the instructions, whoosh the door open, exit, get whooshed again as the space age cubicle closes on itself and goes about its business of self-cleaning. In private. I'm impressed. And vastly relieved. I'm tempted to watch the whooshing all over again, but don't have the small coins and the toilet does not give change.  Apparently, whooshers do have their limits.

It's a long walk back to the hotel, up the gentle slope from the Corniche. We break it with lemon mint drinks and chicken cutlet sandwiches. The sandwiches are not what we ordered from the picture menu, but tasty. Our waiter from last night chats us up to work on his English. His last visa application for the US was rejected because he didn't speak English well enough. His is certainly serviceable, lilting with the melody of his native tongue, a language from Kerala, South India. Oman has hundreds of thousands of ex-patriates from India, many of them running or working in restaurants, adding spice to the Omani diet.

Minus my pants, now afloat in the Gulf of Oman, and a few bags of Spanish and Indian meds left over from my coughing episode earlier on and now left out of the packing ritual, we manage to subvert the laws of physics and get everything back into our back and day packs.  Dates squish a little so we fit our 4 packages, plus the cashews, and sweet yellow raisins in as well. We're supplied for a week's fruity and nutty survival should the plane go down in a tropical paradise.

Our farewell dinner is delicious for the food and Gemutlichkeit. None of us speaks English or German any better than when we met 3 weeks ago, but we're comfortable enough with one another to try. This is a good group of people to travel---and camp---with. Sleeping bags, desert sands, and outdoor toilets tend to filter out the prima donnas of both genders. Fritz and Helena Kraut, first met last year in the sands of Chad, and as delightful and funny in Oman's, hug us goodbye with ...'and next year?' 

That's a problem.  The remaining non-touristy desert spots---Algeria, Libya, Niger, Mali--- are unsafe at the moment. Socotra, an island, off the coast of Yemen, is untouched and accessible via Dubai, BUT says Helena, the interesting parts are in the mountains and there are no roads. Hiking is nicht fur mich, she says. We'll find somewhere....

And so, we say Auf Wiedersehen.

If we're lucky we'll get some sleep before our 01:00am wakeup call

OMAN-DUBAI-MADRID JANUARY 8, 2016

The polite Muscat airport security guy plays the 'What Can We Confiscate This Time' game with sleepy panache. He ferrets out our innocuous, bright yellow, twisted clothes line (a boon for easily hanging stuff out to dry just about anywhere), massages it, unwraps it, checks the clips at either end, and in a coda to a quite professional looking performance, just short of a smell and taste test, announces, 'Not allowed'. It's a superior performance, but I stop short of applause. Security people are not rich in humor. And certainly less so at 02:30am. My metal, sharply point-ended, and lethal looking collapsible walking stick is ignored. Go figure.

An hour later, transit connections at Dubai airport are an immense, stupefying inefficient and poorly arranged lab rat maze. At every point where we milling and rushing lab rats need to move quickly to our next winged reward there are bottlenecks: a 15-minute bus ride from the plane to the terminal, elevators that hold only a dozen of the hundreds of people trying to make their flights, other doors only 6 feet wide forcing the crowd to funnel and jostle, crowded 'people mover' trains. We just make our flight to Madrid, with ground crew telling us to hurry. Yes, that's the idea, isn't it, but how do we get around that barrier between us and you?

But, we're in Row 60 on an A380, an A380, an A380! Leg room, head room, hip room, great entertainment, real bathrooms...and I'm in an aisle seat with no one next to me. I promise to erect a temple to the Travel Gods.

It’s an 8-hour flight across Arabia, the Sahara, a chunk of North Africa, the edge of Crete, a lot of the Mediterranean, and eastern Spain. Emirate Airlines is, as always, superb.

Waiting for the bathroom wears thin, even on an A380. Other amusement is called for. There are 500 films to choose from. Always a pushover for bad pseudo-scientific sci-fi, I pick The Martian, a formulaic but unhorrible adaptation of Robinson Crusoe, with a great performance by Matt Damon as Robinson in a spacesuit and by the spectacular 'Martian' landscape.  The sandy mountainous terrain reminds both of us of the wonders of our 2014/2015 trip in the desert of Chad, though I doubt it was filmed in Chad. Filming it on Mars would be easier

I follow that reasonable film with the latest dreadful incarnation in the geriatric Jurassic Park franchise, a wallow in an overblown dinosaurian combo of trite screen writing and improbable acting of stupefyingly inept proportions. Where DO they find these 'actors'? The velociraptors gave the best performances. Enough already with the dinosaurs and their thoroughly explicable appetite for insufferable children.

Madrid is chilly and rainy, but decision-free, thanks to old hotel points that get us a no-pay room at the Airport Hilton with zero hassle.  The room is hyper stylish, marbled, glassed, in that cold 'design is everything’ European look. We don’t care. The beds are heaven with domesticated clouds as duvets.

Hours later, still too droopy to wander in the rain, even for Spanish food, we stay in, guests of Conrad, Paris, and the other Hiltons. Paying guests. We pass on the $25 burger in the bar. The restaurant, sorry, 'grille', offers more. A delicious truffled tagliatelle sets us back $25, anyway. Each. No salad, wine, dessert. Welcome to Europe. The $2 meals in India will offset this implosion of our budget.

I miss the desert.

Tomorrow, between us and home there are several more hours beneath Madrid 's soft duvets, a $15 'continental' breakfast (aka coffee and a croissant), two more airports to navigate, out of Madrid's and into Miami's, dreaded monument to inconvenience and poor signage, one more long flight across an ocean, (a frequent flyer freebie on Iberia Airlines, rumored to be many steps below Emirates, and definitely short on A380s), one more free hotel night (Miami), one more long drive (from Miami). 

I miss the desert.

In late March we reverse the process, but aim slightly southward towards a return to Kenya (animals) and Ethiopia (friends and the tribal South Omo region), then first-time visits, definitely to Djibouti, almost certainly to Somaliland, probably to Rwanda, and maybe to Burundi. The latter gets less and less likely every day as their embryonic civil war escalates.

Stay tuned.